Archive | love

We don’t have a big yard, its about the size of a couple postage stamps, give or take a few images of the Queen. But we do have a forest just behind the ordinary chain link fence, a dense coastal forest filled with cedars and squirrels, spirea mountain ash and coyotes. Every September, a mama bear and her cub lumber through for a few weeks and we keep our tinies inside or carefully supervise them instead of what we usually do: open the door, set the boundaries – “this house to this house, our yard and your best friend’s yard” – and let them go. We have salmonberry bushes and blackberry bushes tangled up around a little creek that runs through, we poke our hands through the thickets, braving scratches, for the first berries of the year. By August, we’ll be sick of blackberries, the jam will already be made.

We don’t live in the wilderness, just a quiet little neighbourhood of semi-detached homes on the edge of town in the valley. We’re next to a blueberry farm. We have been thinking seriously about moving this year. We got so far as to buy a house and set our moving dates but then for a few reasons, it all fell apart. Now that it’s been a few weeks since that disappointment, I’ve come to see the grace hiding in that falling apart. It’s a small thing in the scheme of things, I know, but it loomed large for our little family and was the source of much conversation. We continue to weigh our options, should we stay or should we go?

And life continues. I’m in the midst of editing the new book which is slow going in this season. I stop frequently to nurse the baby or to make lunch or to pick up the tinies from the bus stop. I have a babysitter for our preschooler two mornings a week which is an enormous help. My husband takes the three big kids to my parents’ place for the day on a Saturday now and again, giving me the house and the baby to myself as I try to put a chapter to bed. Serendipitously, two weekends ago when he did that, it was a chapter about how discussions of theology need ordinary people to be involved, how well-educated and well-read and well-travelled scholars also need us low church experiential local folks talking about how we see and experience and know God, about how theologians are hiding in every walk of life. I wrote those words at my kitchen table with the youngest of four tinies beside me, snoring. Naptime writing is urgent writing, sometimes I think it might be my best thinking. This isn’t speculation: if theology – how we think about God and then how we live that out – isn’t for all of us, then what is it even for?

Caring for small children, being a homemaker, can be repetitive and ordinary: laundry, cleaning bathtubs, long walks made twice as long by wandering and questions, grocery shopping, nursing, all of it. Life is rarely as exciting as people like for it to appear on Facebook. We go to church, we participate in leadership meetings to shape the conversations of our communities, we pray for our friends, we make meals, I write posts and articles and books about God, we wash our minivans, we set up the sprinkler for the neighbourhood kids and hand out freezies to hopeful hands, we go to work, we talk about the people we know. Sacred and beautiful, sure, I’ll say that, but also slow and daily and sometimes monotonous, too.

But even in that ordinary work, I keep trying to give shape to the new world, to the dangerous possibilities of living our lives right now as if God saved everything, as if it is all redeemed or being redeemed. If what I believe about Love doesn’t find a roost here in my regular and ordinary and unremarkable life where I learn and practice what Eugene Peterson called “the biggest nouns and verbs,” then I have no right to those words in moments of transformation and change and importance. There are chickadees perched on the railings of the deck, just for a few seconds. They fly in, perch, flinch, and depart, over and over. I like to think they’re all checking for the crumbs leftover from the weekend of eating outside. Maybe they know which house has messy eaters.

My husband and I sat outside on Saturday night, watching the sun set. It’s nearly summer solstice and the days are long. We put the tinies to bed in broad daylight and settled onto our back deck, facing the forest. The sun sank behind the house and that last golden light of the day hit the trees. In the morning, the light is cool and white and sharpening; but in the evening, it’s warm and liquid, it softens the forest.

Brian and I talked about the regular things: should we move? should we stay? We talked about the kids and about work, about the plan for the week ahead. I’m distrustful of people who always seem to be thinking of deep spiritual things, always striving and going-going-going: I think they must be horrible to live with. I think we need the humanity of laughter and Netflix and ordinary life. We poured a glass of white wine each and wrapped ourselves up in blankets. Joe is reading under the covers with a flashlight, I think tonight he’s reading James and the Giant Peach. Anne has left Babysitters Club books littered around the house, Evelynn is devoted to Robert Munsch these days, of course – that slapstick humour perfectly suits her. I secretly love when they sneak-read. Is there any reading more delicious than that sneaky after-bedtime reading when you are a child? The evenings are still cold when the darkness gathers.

We were waiting for our owls. We have two owls out back, I’m not quite sure what kind, perhaps a western screech owl. We have heard that owls mate for life. I don’t know if that’s true or legend, but every year, we see two owls in the summer nights, year after year after year. Our owls come out to hunt. We like to sit there in the near-dark and watch them, swooping down to the forest floor, returning to rest on the branches of the trees with their prizes.

We had a long discussion about what to name our owls, pairs of names are always fun to consider. Romeo and Juliet? Peanut and Butter? Antony and Cleopatra? Nip and Tuck, á la The Blue Castle? Anne and Gilbert? Elizabeth and Darcy? We settled on Ron and Hermione since, well, they are owls and so the Harry Potter books are entirely appropriate.

I don’t think we’re going to move. And it’s entirely the fault of the forest. I live in a tidy little neighbourhood of identical houses, sure, and I don’t have a yard, I get it. But we have the silence of the night and a creek, we have Ron and Hermione, we have the trees, and I don’t think I’m ready to give that up. Maybe I’ll change my mind. A trampoline and a garden would be nice.

When life can feel a bit dull and prosaic, my forest nights somehow keep me grounded in the dense amazement of being alive. I remembered an old Roald Dahl quote I read once, “And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

I believe in magic.

I believe in ordinary and repetitive and daily boring life and the way magic hides in plain sight.

I believe in church picnics and breastfeeding, I believe books matter and summer nights are for sitting outside while the sun sets. I believe in good coffee and eating berries off the bush. I believe in going for walks with children because they are so slow and perfectly inefficient. I believe our theology is formed in our lives and experiences, and I believe we need to listen to each other. I believe in working hard and loving what we do. I believe in unsupervised children and sidewalk chalk and sprinklers. I believe in kitchen tables and piles of books. I believe in windows being wide open while sun-tanned children go to sleep at a reasonable hour so that they can read under the covers with a flashlight. I believe in heavy blankets for cool summer nights and long conversations over a shared bottle of wine, I believe love lasts a lifetime even if it changes, and I believe in birdsong in the morning. I believe in owls.

It’s been fourteen years today since I walked-when-I-wanted-to-run down the chapel aisle to you. Do you remember how the sun was shining but the air was still heavy and wet with the Oklahoma thunderstorm of the day before? We were kids, really, with the intensity of evangelicals about everything from God to each other to our dreams for the future, and that’s okay. We grew up together and that has its own kind of crazy.

You used to be a night owl but that has changed over the years in response to the demands of family life and work. You still love a sleep-in now and then. I’ve always been a morning lark but now I love a good sleep-in too and so we trade – Saturday for one, Sunday for the other. The rest of our life, we rise early trying to get a jump on the day. I hear about couples who wake up early to read the Bible together but that’s never been our thing. You get up and head straight out the door to work in a career you never imagined yourself in fourteen years ago. I get up and head straight upstairs to get the four babies we made ready for their day, pouring cereal and taming curls and brushing teeth and searching for library books. After everyone is out the door, I will settle in to write a sermon. It’s the job I never imagined myself doing fourteen years ago.

We did remember to say “happy anniversary” today. This isn’t a year for big celebrations, we know that. We can’t even manage a supper out yet, our last little baby is still too new for such indulgences. Other people don’t quite get this priority but we get it. We’ve learned by now that there is plenty of time for suppers-out and date-nights and get-aways, these sorts of baby-days only happen a few times in our life. And we’re perfectly happy to be home with the four tinies and take-out.

Maybe next year we’ll do something fun.

Does that sound familiar? Remember how we were planning a trip to the U.K. for our fifth anniversary but then I was six months pregnant on our anniversary and we went to Stanley Park instead. Then we made plans for Mexico for our tenth but instead, well, Evelynn was just four weeks old and we went to Vancouver for a day instead. Then we started to make plans for a driving tour of the western coastlines for our fifteenth but Margaret will only be a year old by then and likely still nursing so we’ll see. Well, maybe the big twenty! Big twenty! we joked.

Who are we kidding?

I remember when we were dating and we didn’t have a dollar for a Sonic drink between the two of us. We used to walk to Walmart across the parking lot of the Mabee Centre in Tulsa on Saturday nights, ending up sitting under the trees and the stars, waxing philosophic as only two college kids who take themselves too seriously can. We never ran out of things to say and we still haven’t. I’d still walk to Walmart with you. When we have an ordinary sort of night, you say, “We made walking to Walmart into a fantastic date” to remind that these ordinary nights matter in a love story. So tonight, we’ll eat take-out on the couch while our babies sleep in their beds and the owls swoop in our forest out back and we talk about the future and what we want to do and then you will ask me if I’d like to watch Jimmy Fallon tonight and I will say yes.

Fourteen was a hard year for us in some places. I can admit that easily. So can you. A lot of change, a lot of upheaval, life demanded much of us and we have tried to rise together. We don’t have any false self to prop up anymore, no pride left, not much dignity. We dance in the kitchen sometimes, and we negotiate soccer practices and bills and crock pots, and we kiss ferociously still, but quietly, so that the kids won’t wake up and interrupt us. This is real life, it’s all real. We have failed each other at times over the years, disappointed each other, and yet we have somehow grown stronger and more whole, become more us, for those very stumbles and frustrations and heartbreaks. It’s the Kingdom economics at work – the very thing that was meant to slay us saves us. The first is last, the least is the greatest, the hurts became our places of communion. We guard those places now.

The day that Margaret was born was another turning point for us somehow. You came down to my depth and you held on. I still haven’t been able to really express it and maybe I will someday or maybe not, maybe some things simply need to be carried without words.

You have seen me at my best and at my worst and you never faltered, you never failed me. You are more than a metaphor.

It changes a woman to know that she can go right down to the bottom of herself and find only love there. You have said the same thing to me about different moments in your life. This is what we do for each other.

We have learned in fourteen years of marriage that our net will hold, we hold each other, so we keep that net strong, we’ve learned this the only way you can learn it: the hard way.

This morning, I said to you, “you know, I should really do a Fourteen Things We’ve Learned in Fourteen Years of Marriage post. It would be fun. We might enjoy figuring it out together.” We looked at each other for a half-second and then we kind of laughed.

“I can’t think of anything off the top of my head,” you said. “Me, either,” I said. “The only thing I know is that I know a lot less now than I used to think I knew.”

“That’s not your style anyway,” you said.

I didn’t know then what I know now about how our life would unfold. It looks very different than we expected. You have changed and I have changed: that’s one of the best gifts we have given each other over the years, room to change and evolve and become more fully ourselves. We have been uncovering our real selves over these fourteen years. But I love that you still call me “Styles” when you’re teasing me.

I like who you were and I like you who are and I like who you are becoming. I like us.

You went out the door to work, the kids went to school, the baby went to sleep, and I thought, well, maybe we do know a few things. There are things we have established in our marriage right from the start that have worked for us: how we handle money, how we speak to each other, how we make decisions, how we lead our family together, how we parent, how we work. We’re practical and we’re committed and we communicate well (eventually) – those three things go a long ways.

Maybe they are our own thing though. What works for us probably wouldn’t work for someone else’s marriage.

Over the years, I’ve decided that it’s less about the rules we keep and the boundaries we maintain and the principles we practice in this marriage. Those are helpful and useful, absolutely. But that isn’t the stuff of magic. It’s the work that creates space for the magic.

But the magic, ah, now that’s our thing. That has always been our thing. Maybe the one thing we have absolutely in common: we crave the magic, the love affair, the passion, the sense of destiny, the great story of us. We are matched in passion. We aren’t content to just get by as roommates, we demand magic of each other, we demand meaning out of even the most mundane moments of our life together.

We only feel disconnected and furious when the magic has departed from us. Even though we know better than to believe in soulmates, practically and logically and theologically, we still default to that language because it’s all we have: soulmates. Meant to be. We were always meant to be, we believed it then, and we choose to believe it now.

Here is the best magic maker we’ve discovered so far: you first.

You first, you first, you first.

Selflessness is best practiced in concert. We choose each other. You lay down your life for me and for our children. I lay down my life for you and for our children. We put each other first, together, in practical ways and spiritual ways, in our dreams and our visions, in our minds and hearts towards each other. It’s not perfect and we make mistakes and we’re occasionally both very selfish. Maybe me more than you. But right from the start, there was never a second thought, never a wonder if something better might come along someday. You choose me and I choose you and who else was there for us but each other?

You saw the real me before I did. I see the real you still. Your hair is turning grey and it suits you. You are a better person than I could ever dream of being. I’m getting bolder. We’re still dreaming of what could be. We are each other’s best mirror.

We wake to the pitiful words of a filthy tiny girl who promptly throws up again all over our bedding and my maternity jammies.

It’s 2:07 in the morning.

This is what we do without exchanging a word: I take care of the girl – washing her sturdy small body in warm bath water then finding clean jammies and snuggling while he takes care of her sheets and the carpets, opens windows, starts the laundry. Together we make a warm little bed on the floor next to our bed with the old toddler bed mattress, we switch sides of the bed so I can be closer to the little sickie, and then we are all back asleep, exhausted. It’s our sick kid rhythm, developed over the years, and in particular over this past two weeks of on-again-off-again stomach flu for one tiny.

Nearly sixteen years ago, we built our love on the set times of our togetherness: let’s meet after class, let’s go out for a date tonight I’ll see you at 8 o’clock, okay? We went for long drives and talked about the future together. An unrepentant morning person, I signed up for 7:50 classes and, even though it went against his natural night owl tendencies, he woke up early just to eat breakfast with me: then love looked like 7:20 in the cafeteria, black coffee in hand.

In the hours leading up to curfew, we parked on lonely backroads to kiss until we were too dizzy to drive, listening to the songs on the radio. We were at the mercy of late-night DJs or carefully curated mix tapes. Love felt sexy and a bit wild, purposeful and mysterious. Midnight drew near and we drove frantically back to campus. I was the Head RA skidding into the dorm, barely on time.

We swore we wouldn’t become those tired ones in the middle of their life, living just a regular sort of life. We are meant for more than the ordinary! we bought the lie, hook line and sinker from the evangelical hero complex. Life was meant to be an adventure, filled with risk and romance. Love would look like this for us forever. Like we were somehow above or better than the minivans and mortgages, the tub scrubbing and sheet washing, like our clock would always be made up of bright mornings and late nights.

But here’s the truth: lifelong love is actually most built throughout the hours of the day, all twenty four of them, in the ordinary moments of our humanity. Lifelong love isn’t just for lazy Saturday mornings of coffee and books, it’s not just midnight breathlessness scented with perfume, it’s not just evening dinners with a bottle of wine. Those moments of our lives are lovely and necessary, too, but they’re not the fullness of love either. Love looks like choosing each other, again, in all of the rotations of the clock’s hands, in all of the years we share together, in the seasons and the minutes. It’s glamorous and sexy, and it’s boring and daily.

I have come to believe that lifelong love often looks extraordinary, yes, but it’s because we are faithful to love well in the ordinary minutes of our days.

Because love also looks like 2:07 a.m. with sick kids and it looks like 8:10 a.m. when everyone is running late to school and work. It looks like laying on the couch together at 9:18 p.m. on a Friday and admitting that you both just want to go to sleep already. It’s sneaking into each other’s early morning showers on weekdays. It’s heating up leftovers at 5:37 p.m. on Thursdays, it’s organizing closets on Saturday afternoons at 1:28 p.m. after the morning’s dentist appointments followed by stern lectures about flossing, too. It’s the time when our words are sharp or, worse, disappearing from each other. It’s 2:46 p.m. and 7:15 a.m. and 6:55 a.m., those minutes when our babies safely arrived earthside, breathed our air for the first time, and he wept with relief and I laughed like Sarah of old. It’s kissing under the stars at midnight, yes, and dancing slow in the kitchen-that-still-needs-to-be-cleaned, while tinies do homework at the table and crumbs stick to our feet.

It’s easier to feel love in certain minutes of the day, I know this. And I also know that by 2:42 a.m. when all has been restored and babies are sleeping again and the window is cracked open for a bit of fresh air, when we are back in our bed and quietly groaning at how over-the-puking-thing we both are by now, it’s then, when he reaches out for me and moves the hair back off my neck before resting his calloused hands on the baby still growing within me, when the baby rolls up against his palm, and he whispers, “hey, you” quietly, it’s in that moment that I think the love we make or find or reimagine at the unexpected moments is still the sweetest.

You have been travelling a bit more than usual, and I was in the home stretch of another week of solo parenting. My parents had graciously (read: heard the desperation in my voice and taken pity on me) invited us all over for pizza on the last night. On our way home in the minivan, a motorcycle sped past us, and a new line of questioning was introduced by the tinies. They asked if we ever had a motorcycle and, of course, no, because well, we aren’t risk takers, you and me, are we? And maybe because we had just been at Granny and Papa’s house, who knows, but they wanted to know if Papa or Granny ever had a motorcycle.

Without a thought, I told them the story I knew so well: the one about how my dad used to have a motorcycle when he was a teenager because well, he was that kind of kid. But when he showed up for a date with my mum, she wouldn’t get on the motorcycle because her father had forbidden it. Papa was incredulous – after all, he is the kind of guy who just does what he wants and screw the rules and the rule-makers – but sure enough, she stood her ground and let him ride away.

“That could have been the end of the story, but no,” I said. “Your Papa, well, he was already in love. Your Granny was so beautiful – she had a long sheet of golden brown hair, just the colour of Evelynn’s hair, and she had blue eyes just like you three here with me, and so instead, your Papa sold that old motorcycle and the next time he asked her out, he had a car to drive. She said yes, of course, and then they fell in love and got married. At the end, I said, you see? Your Papa loved your Granny more than any old motorcycle, right from the start. She was worth it.”

Their eyes were big as saucers, you know how they get. But they were silent – for once. And then they asked to hear the story again, and so I told it again, just the way I remembered it anyway, because that is the story I heard all the time as a kid. We arrived home, and I put them to bed after all of the rituals, and then I sat around and watched television by myself. I stayed up too late because you weren’t there to make me go to bed. I changed the countdown on the kitchen cupboard blackboard: 5 4 3 2 1 more sleep until Dad is home!

You came home on Saturday. Later on in the weekend, you were in the car with Annie and from her perch in the backseat, she asked you if you wanted to hear a love story. And of course, you said yes, and then she said, “Well, once upon a time, Papa had a motorcycle….” and then you listened to her re-tell the old story I’ve told you a few (dozen) times, using my exact phrases and expressions.

As she wrapped it up, she said, “Papa loved Granny more than any old motorcycle.”

You were amazed at how they remembered every word, and I thought of another generation growing up in the safety of our family fables.

Darling, let’s remember to tell them our stories, too.

Remind me to tell them about the nights we used to spend laying on the hood of your old car, stretched out with our backs against the windshield, staring at the Oklahoma nights. Remind me to tell them about how we danced to old Garth Brooks songs from an AM radio station on the side roads. Remember to tell them about the first time you saw me walking across the gym in university, knee high black boots and a mini-skirt among everyone in their workout gear.

Let’s spin our own yarns here at home, beloved, among all the books littered on the floor and buried under their pillows. Let’s tell them our homemade fairy tales.

Let’s tell them about our sacred places: the side yard in Texas, perhaps, the parking lot of the Mabee Centre, the little booth in the Earl’s near our Vancouver apartment. Don’t forget that creek we found as we drove through Arizona during the hardest year of our lives: the one we heard before we saw it. And we scrabbled down a red rock embankment covered in dust, just to sit on the stones and soak our swollen hot feet in the clear water. Remember how the sun came through the trees, and we began to feel something like hope, perhaps stirring, fluttering, through the leaves, descending to us again. Maybe we’ll tell them about the night we went camping in the mountains of New Mexico and a blizzard blew up, so we drove down the mountain to stay in a hotel, leaving our kit and tent all set up. We had a shower, ate bacon and eggs, and then went back up the mountain later in the day to finish the trip.

Maybe we’ll tell them about the night you proposed in the moonlight, kneeling in the grass with a mix tape playing Six Pence None the Richer songs on the portable CD player, holding up a ring paid for with the tips from Tulsa oil tycoons at the club where you worked. Maybe we’ll tell them about the guys in San Antonio who play the pan flute at the Riverwalk mall, and the mariachi bands, and the way we lingered over tables with bright umbrellas above us. And the way we used to hold hands as we wandered through Gruene, listening to Americana music through clapboard walls of an old dance hall. Maybe we’ll tell them about Kananaskis but probably not.

Because let’s not kid ourselves: our best – and our worst – stories will always be secrets, just ours, always.

Maybe we’ll tell them something about our wedding, but I’ll have to be honest: if I had to do it again, I’d have married you way sooner, and we could have run away together. That sounds nice to me now.

Let’s fill their little minds with the thousands of ways we’ve convinced ourselves that we were meant to be: let’s tell them about 28 May 1989 and the weird way it connects us because that was the day you decided to become a Christian sitting on the edge your parents’ bed in Omaha and at the exact same moment in a church in Winnipeg, I was descending into a water tank for my baptism into the faith. Maybe we’ll talk about Naples and Riadoso, that one field somewhere in the middle of Kansas where we had a picnic after I met your parents, oh, and the Silverthorne Village Inn on the winter nights of Colorado when we sneaked out of the communal condo and stayed up all night, talking, over terrible coffee.

We’ll talk about the way you drove up to see me in the dead of a Canadian winter, staying the night with my uncle and aunt. You’ll laugh and tell them about how everyone made fun of your old Monte Carlo because you didn’t have a block heater for the cold night ahead, and how my Uncle pulled his own car out of the garage, just to put your old maroon Monte inside, so you could leave first thing for the last leg to Calgary to me, our first Christmas together. And then – you loved this part – he went out on the deck, in minus 30 degree weather, and grilled you a steak at 11 o’clock at night, and you sat at their kitchen table eating meat and talking about nothing for a few more hours. You fell in love with Canada that night, I think.

Maybe we’ll talk about fear and sacrifices, about choosing each other’s best first, about deep sadness and the way we’ve clung to each other through dreams unfulfilled and longings unsatisfied and the still-waiting of right now. Someday maybe I’ll tell them about the babies who aren’t here with us, and about the night you stood in the darkness of their childhood room with another little lost one bundled into a kitchen tea towel and how I stood in doorway and listened as you cried and cried and cried. We’ll tell them about the nights they were born, the way I always burst out in laughter and you always burst into tears after they were safely earthside. Let’s tell them about the mundane beauties of their lives, and how we used to have them tucked in between us in our old bed so we could meet eyes over their downy heads to silently telegraph our disbelief at our luck – look at this! a real little person! – at each other. We’ll talk about how we lived pay cheque to pay cheque, and it was worth every single tense conversation about the budget. We’ll tell them about the greatest part of parenting – witnessing them become the people they were meant to be all along – and how it made us love each other even more than we thought possible. We’ll talk about the teamwork of parenting, about how you always knew when I was at Noise Capacity and would whisk them outside for a street hockey game.

Let’s tell them about the vast middle part of love, too, this part right now, the part that doesn’t show up in movies and love songs, the part where my hips have widened and your hair is greying, and some of our dreams are languishing at the same time that others are coming true. About how we’ve become better acquainted and more appreciative of the fruit of faithfulness and gentleness as the years go by.

We’re still choosing each other, over and over and over again, this is what we want, this is what I want, this is what we want, you are who I want, still, then, always.

Let’s make them feel like they’re part of a love story, let’s tell them how love looked for us.

Let them catch us slow dancing in our pink kitchen to Patty Griffin songs, let them hear us say it out loud: we used to sit in an empty baseball stadium in the middle of the night and kiss behind home plate. Oh, and how when they were little, we put them to bed early for two reasons – first, it’s best for them and second, it made sure we had a few hours together every night to talk or make out or just watch telly.

Let’s hold hands on the gearshift of the vehicle, the way we do, the way we’ve always done, until we’re old and we will tell them the stories of their grandparents and their great grandparents, about Nebraska and Saskatchewan, Alberta and Oklahoma, Texas and beautiful British Columbia.

Let’s go to preschool graduations and high school graduations and university graduations, and then let’s stand in our empty nest house someday and cry because it went too fast and try to figure out the rest of it, and then laugh because there is still so much life ahead, who are we kidding? Let’s go to Paris and London, India and Cavendish together, all the places we never got to go because of money and tinies and plane fares, then let’s stay home and watch the sun set in the sky we love here, and let’s drink a bit too much and kiss until the stars come down.

We’ve had a regular sort of life perhaps, not too special to the outside eyes, but it’s enough to keep us warm.

Wrap me up in the ways we’ve loved each other, darling, and let’s keep on spinning.

Thirteen years ago today, our marriage began. I brought out the big wedding album for the tinies to see us in our wedding finery. Do kids today still have the big official albums? We said our vows long before Pinterest and digital cameras, let alone iPhones with apps. Instead, we have this heavy leather-bound gold-embossed album with nicely staged photos in the stock poses. Here we are lighting a unity candle. Here we are with our parents. Here we are walking away into a soft-focus background. But you can still see the real us peeking through the tulle and the tuxedo: our enthusiasm, our youth, our joy, our curiosity, our hope. Remember when we were that certain boy and that know-it-all girl?

To celebrate, we went out to the ocean town for supper last night. I shaved my legs, you put on a clean t-shirt, aren’t we getting fancy? We stood on the western shoreline before supper with our arms wrapped around each other, staring into the abyss. Teenagers were just down the shore from us, taking selfies and posing by the water. Thirteen years, we said in a sort of disbelief. I suppose this makes us grown-ups. In some ways, these years have flown by – weren’t we always together? – and in other ways, we see every single day of it, stretched out to the horizon, remember this, remember that, remember the dozens of men and women we have been throughout these years? We’ve gathered shadows and light.

I briefly considered writing an article with thirteen things we have learned in thirteen years of marriage. But who are we kidding? It’s an art, not a science, not the fodder of click-bait on the Internet, not a performance. We’re not reductionists. It’s a mystery, a thin place between the heavens and the earth, made all the better and richer for the secrets we keep for each other and the freedom we enjoy. I could write those damn thirteen-things-we’ve-learned-in-thirteen-years-of-marriage but I’d still be left with an inadequate shrug and the je nais sais quoi that defines all marriages. We’re still that slow dance under-the-stars, finding our steps together, moving further and further out onto the water. Sure, there are practicalities we’ve learned about how we move through life – budgets and bills, babies and basketball practices, sex and laundry, communication and callings. But underneath it all, really, we’re still curious, we’re still saying yes, it’s poetry that makes the prose worth living, and it keeps us a bit wild, hosanna.

We sat in the cool spring sunset to eat seafood. When you kept refilling my glass, I asked if you were trying to take advantage of me and you waggled your eyebrows at me: “absolutely.” The bottle of Pinot Noir was empty by darkness.

We talked a bit about the years that lay behind us, of course we did, but really we wanted to talk about the years ahead. We talked about our curiosities: what sounds like fun to learn about? If I wanted to follow a rabbit trail of knowledge for a while, where would I begin? I’m curious about seminary, oh, and I think that after this second book is done, I might try to dig out that novel again. You want to geek out about furniture building for a while, oh, and gardening again. You’ve turned into quite the tree hugger. Perhaps you could find a way to use all of your business expertise towards justice and peace-making. I think I’d like to chase a bit of knowledge about the French woman’s aesthetic, quilt-making, fashion, maybe think about a doctoral degree in what? women’s studies? poetry? who knows? oh, and let’s talk again about living abroad. Maybe England? Which part of England? Holidays in France, of course. So much to discuss and dream.

Over these thirteen years, we’ve often felt like we’re running to catch up with the consequences of saying “yes” to God, yes to our best hopes instead of our worst fears. Would we have been so agreeable and fearless if we knew how much courage it would take to abandon our neatly laid out plans for life, let alone how much we would change? I think so. I hope so. Maybe it’s best that we don’t know what waits at the end of the aisle. Let it come, we’ll keep walking together. I like you curious.

We drove home in the moonlight, listening to old songs from back in the 90s when we were dating. I slipped off my shoes and put my feet up on the dash. You kept your hand on my bare thigh, the window was down, we took the the backroads. Your hair is scattered with grey now – it suits you – but that Midwest-boy grin is the same, can’t you drive a bit faster?

Maybe this is the oneness of marriage then: there is no editing for any part of our selves. We bring it all to each other and abide into the end of it all: body soul spirit mind past present future dreams despair curiosities evolutions desire deference silence song weariness wonder.

You’re waking up again, I think. You’re re-imagining life, emerging into yet another new self. I’ve loved every iteration of you. You have always loved those lines from Yeats for us: